Johnson Attends Missouri Valley Renewable Energy Groundbreaking

Vermillion, SD—Today, U.S. Senator Tim Johnson (D-SD) attended the groundbreaking ceremony for Missouri Valley Renewable Energy at the Dakota Dome in Vermillion. The ceremony is to mark the beginning of the company's new ethanol plant, which will be located near Meckling, and is expected to produce 60 million gallons of ethanol annually.

"With the certainty of a robust renewable fuel standard, ethanol is no longer a faith-based proposition," Johnson said. "Growing market share, increasing the efficiency of existing plants and building new, state-of-the-art facilities, such as Missouri Valley Ethanol's plant near Vermillion, will allow for American progress toward greater energy independence."

In June, Johnson and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) introduced the Grassley-Johnson 10 by 10 Act. The bill would require all motor fuel sold in the United States to include ten percent renewable fuel by the year 2010. The Grassley-Johnson 10 by 10 Act would allow domestic ethanol at Millennium Ethanol and other South Dakota plants to grow toward their full potential. By 2010, the United States would need to produce approximately 15 billion gallons annually of renewable fuels to match 10 percent of total gasoline consumption.

Additional efforts Johnson supports to move away from foreign oil include, The Biofuels Security Act of 2006, which will increase the availability of flexible fuel vehicles, capable of performing on an 85 percent ethanol blend of motor fuels; and the bipartisan "25 x 25" Senate resolution, which sets the goal that twenty-five percent of all energy consumed in the United States is from renewable energy sources by the year 2025.

Johnson, a member of the Senate Energy Committee and negotiator on the committee that produced a final Energy Bill in 2005, helped secure a Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) that will increase to 7.5 billion gallons over a 7 year period. Currently, ethanol production utilizes over 100 million bushels a year, which represents about 1 in every 4 rows of corn.